-- Victoria D. (Pastoral Counselor and Author, Maryland)

-- Lois R. (Spiritual Director, Pennsylvania)

-- Kent Ira Groff, writer, poet, retreat leader, and spiritual guide now living in Denver, Colorado.

While most of the story of The Healing Tree of Lost Love and Missed Opportunity came to me suddenly one Saturday afternoon truly “out of the blue” (while working in my garage!), and was basically written in about a week, many people played a part in bringing this story to the public.

Brenda Kay Fleming, who helped me with many details, suggestions, and proof-reading throughout the long and challenging process of completing this story for actual publication

Dian Nelson, who professionally reviewed and edited the original manuscript and made many helpful comments and corrections

Rhonda Dyson, a very talented friend, who produced the wonderful cover and photo graphics that introduce each chapter illustrating the story. You can find Rhonda on Facebook at Rhonda-Dyson-Photography.

Vicky Hollar Duncan, Ginger O’Connell, the late Sanford Alwine, Lois Richwine, Kent Groff, and Vicky Cairns who read the various drafts. Each encouraged me with suggestions and affirmations to get this into print as an eBook (and possibly later in paperback for distribution) because each felt it could help others in their life journeys.

And my mother, Marie Kitzmiller Fleming Barnhart, who encouraged me throughout my life to keep moving forward, facing life’s challenges and disappointments (and there have been more than a few of those) with courage and hope.

Steven R. Fleming
December 2016

Some graphics used herein were obtained from Shutterstock.com and used under license/permission. Other images (mostly Celtic) are in the public domain or royalty-free. Some photographs are by Steven R. Fleming. All images copyrighted by their perspective owners. All rights reserved.

In a far-away land, not easily reached, is The Tree of Healing for those burdened by thoughts of lost love or missed opportunity. It is reported The Tree is high upon a mountaintop, with endless views in every direction of astonishing clarity and beauty. A long, winding, well-trodden ancient stone path leads from the lush meadows below to a flat, rocky summit where this Tree has stood since before human time began.

As one approaches this place there is an endless line of pilgrims, stretching far into the distant reaches of those meadows, many making their way in solemn, pensive silence toward the beginning of the path to the summit.

They come – women and men, younger and older, from every country and nation. Some are short, some tall, some well-proportioned, some not. Onlookers might describe some of these persons as attractive, while others might be considered plain, perhaps even unattractive. It doesn’t matter. They are all here for the same purpose. Someplace, somehow, someway, for some reason, they are dealing with a lost opportunity or a lost love.

If asked, more than a few pilgrims would say they have had multiple such hard experiences, as if life has piled them on one after another until they feel virtually crushed to the ground. Others have had but one. Their wounds, however, are just as deep and the pain just as excruciating. All harbor some sense their future is somehow bleak, the days ahead dark and empty.

For a number of these pilgrims, their lost love or missed opportunity is fresh in time and memory. They can barely think of anything else: hour after hour, day after day. Consumed. Obsessed.

Others have carried around their feelings, struggles, pain and disappointments for many years, perhaps most of a lifetime. Yet, even so many years after the event, a song, a sound, a place, a smell, a photograph, an unexpected memory dredges their pain back up from where they had tried to bury it long ago. Or rebury it last month. Or even yesterday. Regardless of how deep they try to make the burial hole, however, those experiences and related pain resurface again and again in cruel, sad, dispiriting repetition.

But they have come, these pilgrims, on a journey to find out if the stories they had heard about The Tree of Healing of Lost Love or Missed Opportunity were true. In this place, someone had told them, people just like them had found peace, solace, and healing.

Some of the many pilgrims had just about given up hope for true healing of mind, spirit, and heart. They came, hoping – perhaps praying -- there was something to the story that would make the long and arduous journey worthwhile.